1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for efficiently coding Chinese characters so as to alleviate the collision rate to an acceptable minimum.
2. Description of the Related Art
For the last several decades, Chinese computer users have been wrestling with the alphabetic keyboards, trying to squeeze the Chinese characters into the screen with the uneasy newly invented so called Three corners method, Goo coding system, Five strokes method, Changjie's input scheme, etc., trying to retrieve the Chinese characters from the Chinese characters pool, even though there's no problem with the capacity of huge memory storage. However, none of these input methods provides an acceptable, easy to use, standardized input/output scheme to speed up the retrieval, typewriting process, by taking full advantages of the computer technology. While these input methods have been put to decent practical use, a need still remains for improving the known encodation systems. So far, the numeric type of coding would seem to meet the requirement. Eventually, the encodation instantly becomes the index of Chinese characters, and their literatures. Chinese characters are pictographic, ideographic, hieroglyphic, etc. Chinese character strokes and symbols are so different and so complicated that they can be sorted and grouped in a wide variety of ways. One can analytically sort out as many as 35-40 strokes of 4-10 symbols or more per Chinese character, depending upon how they are grouped.
The related art is represented by the following patents of interest.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,936,664, issued on Feb. 3, 1976 to Hiroshi Sato, describes an apparatus for generating a character pattern. U.S. Pat. No. 3,950,734, issued on Apr. 13, 1976 to Tzu-Hung Li, describes a simplified keyboard on which Chinese characters are represented in accordance with a system for classifying the structure of each character providing a hundred prefix and suffix combinations in rows and columns identified respectively with indexing codes, permitting any Chinese character to be indicated two keystrokes on the input keyboard. U.S. Pat. No. 4,079,482, issued on Mar. 21, 1978 to Chan H. Yeh, describes a system for encoding binary information for the electronic data processing of complex characters and in particular Chinese characters. U.S. Pat. No. 4,096,934, issued on Jun. 27, 1978 to Philip George Kirmser et al., describes a typewriter for reproducing desired Chinese ideographs. U.S. Pat. No. 4,122,533, issued on Oct. 24, 1978 to Ronald Arthur Kubinak, describes a photocomposition machine with a versatile control for displaying symbols of any one of several selectable languages, yet without duplicating the character generators and associated memory for each language. U.S. Pat. No. 4,144,405, issued on Mar. 13, 1979 to Shuichi Wakamatsu, describes a Kanji-character writing device. U.S. Pat. No. 4,163,229, issued on Jul. 31, 1979 to Leslie J. Brodin, describes a display system which displays symbols formed by assembling rows of indicia. U.S. Pat. No. 4,173,753, issued on Nov. 6, 1979 to Hsu Ching Chou, describes a method of entering Chinese characters into an input system of a Sino-Computer. U.S. Pat. No. 4,181,973, issued on Jan. 1, 1980 to Samuel C. Tseng, describes a character generator which reconstructs an original character image from compacted data representing the original character. U.S. Pat. No. 4,193,119, issued on Mar. 11, 1980 to Shingo Arase et al., describes an apparatus for assembling material for a printed text which maintains a display of the text material as it is developed and which concurrently displays character forms from which further text characters may be sequentially selected. U.S. Pat. No. 4,228,507, issued on Oct. 14, 1980 to Carl Leban, describes a method of transcribing non-alphabetic characters by entering into a computer one of a given finite plurality of symbols defining one of the elements in the character, successively entering into the computer given finite pluralities of symbols defining other elements in the character, and entering with the given finite plurality of symbols defining other elements in the character predetermined ones of a finite plurality of symbols defining the position of the other elements relative to the element defined by the previous symbol. U.S. Pat. No. 4,251,871, issued on Feb. 17, 1981 to Wellington C. Yu, describes a machine implementable method for reconstructing Chinese-like whole characters in a designated alphabet. U.S. Pat. No. 4,270,022, issued on May 26, 1981 to Shiu C. Loh, describes a character selection keyboard for use in connection with an ideographic language of which the characters can each comprise one or more of a set of character components. U.S. Pat. No. 4,286,329, issued on Aug. 25, 1981 to Gerald Goertzel et al., describes a complex character generator for characters such as Kanji characters, Hebrew character, Arabic characters or the like. U.S. Pat. No. 4,294,550, issued on Oct. 13, 1981 to An Wang, describes a typewriter for ideographic characters, U.S. Pat. No. 4,327,421, issued on Apr. 27, 1982 to Gary Y. Wang, describes a method and apparatus for printing Chinese or other ideographic characters. U.S. Pat. No. 4,379,288, issued on Apr. 5, 1983 to Daniel L. Leung et al., describes a word processing system for Chinese type characters. U.S. Pat. No. 4,408,199, issued on Oct. 4, 1983 to Douglass A. White et al., describes the generation of a character set such as the Oriental character set from a forty-four key keyboard utilizing standardized coded signals for input. U.S. Pat. No. 4,462,703, issued on Jul. 31, 1984 to Hsing C. Lee, describes a method and apparatus for controlling and ordering Chinese characters wherein a Chinese character is formed from a set of form-strokes and the strokes which from the characters are divided into four basic stroke subsets. U.S. Pat. No. 4,498,143, issued on Feb. 5, 1985 to Stanislaus Strzelecki, describes a method and apparatus for forming ideograms (or ideographic characters) including Chinese and Japanese Kanji, with associated alphabetic symbols for Roman, Hiragana, Chinese BoPoMoFo, Korean Hankul and the like. U.S. Pat. No. 4,543,631, issued on Sep. 24, 1985 to Masaaki Kurosu et al., describes a Japanese text inputting system having an interactive mnemonic mode and a display choice mode. U.S. Pat. No. 4,559,615, issued on Dec. 17, 1985 to Atkin Y. Goo et al., describes a complex character generator. U.S. Pat. No. 4,868,779, issued on Sep. 19, 1989 to Tetsuo Seto, describes a character code generating device. U.S. Pat. No. 4,868,913, issued on Sep. 19, 1989 to Ann Tse-Kai, describes a system of encoding Chinese characters according to their patterns. U.S. Pat. No. 4,879,653, issued on Nov. 7, 1989 to Yoshinori Shinoto, describes a system for selecting a desired ideographic character or at least one word including at least one ideographic character from a plurality of ideographic characters each of which have an ideographic configuration containing hieroglyphic elements, such as Chinese characters. U.S. Pat. No. 4,937,745, issued on Jun. 26, 1990 to Amiram Carmon, describes a method and apparatus for selecting and storing script characters, particularly Chinese, in a computerized system containing a memory wherein is stored a database of such script characters. U.S. Pat. No. 4,920,492, issued on Apr. 24, 1990 to Jeff Wang, describes a method of inputting Chinese characters into computers and the keyboard arrangement thereof. U.S. Pat. No. 4,949,260, issued on Aug. 14, 1990 to Su-Hsia Hsu, describes a method for inputting information in Chinese through a hieroglyphic approach. U.S. Pat. No. 4,951,202, issued on Aug. 21, 1990 to Miin J. Yan, describes an oriental language processing system. U.S. Pat. No. 5,119,296, issued on Jun. 2, 1992 to Yili Zheng et al., describes a computer-encoding method for Chinese characters and a corresponding information processing apparatus. U.S. Pat. No. 5,131,766, issued on Jul. 21, 1992 to Kam-Fu Wong, describes a method for encoding Chinese characters into a computer. U.S. Pat. No. 5,187,480, issued on Feb. 16, 1993 to Ronald H. Thomas et al. describes a method and apparatus for assembling text in ideographic language characters. U.S. Pat. No. 5,197,810, issued on Mar. 30, 1993 to Daozheng Zhang et al., describes a method and apparatus for inputting both simplified form and original complex form Chinese characters. U.S. Pat. No. 5,307,267, issued on Apr. 26, 1994 to Gong M. Yang, describes a keyboard input device for a user to input a plurality of characters and symbols. U.S. Pat. No. 5,319,552, issued on Jun. 7, 1994 to Xingguo Zhong, describes a method and apparatus for converting a representation of a pronunciation by means of phonetic symbols of Chinese inputted from a keyboard or the like into a corresponding Chinese character to output the same. U.S. Pat. No. 5,378,068, issued on Jan. 3, 1995 to Teyh-Fwu Hua, describes a word processor for generating Chinese characters. U.S. Pat. No. 5,634,066, issued on May 27, 1997 to Mitsuru Takehara et al., describes an information processing apparatus by which characters can be inputted easily. U.S. Pat. No. 5,713,033, issued on Jan. 27, 1998 to Ichiro Sado, describes electronic equipment capable of converting or translating a first language to a second language or vice versa, such as a KANA-to-KANJI conversion. Great Britain Patent document 2,030,335, published on Apr. 2, 1980, describes a character selection keyboard for use in connection with an ideographic language of which characters can each comprise one or more of a set of character components. Great Britain Patent document 2,057,973, published on Apr. 8, 1981, describes an input system for a Sino-Computer. Great Britain Patent document 2,125,197, published on Feb. 29, 1984, describes a method of encoding Chinese characters. Great Britain Patent document 2,158,626, published on Nov. 13, 1985, describes a universal system for encoding Chinese characters and a kind of keyboard designed on the basis of the system. Great Britain Patent document 2,239,542, published on Jul. 3, 1991, describes a holographic code for Chinese characters. European Patent document 563,390, published on Oct. 6, 1993, describes a personal computer message displaying method. Japan Patent document 58-168135, published on Oct. 4, 1983, describes a keyboard device. Japan Patent document 59-43431, published on Mar. 19, 1984, describes a method for inputting Chinese characters.
None of the above inventions and patents, taken either singularly or in combination, is seen to describe the instant invention as claimed.